The reason this seems to be argued about so much seems to be because a lot of people simply don't have the problems you're referring to. I keep reading these reports of Maya being slow in certain situations on GF2 cards, but I'm just not seeing it. There is some choppiness with Artisan and Paint FX with the GF Ultra, but it's still perfectly workable, and it's no worse than other pro cards I've seen. In fact, it's probably faster.
I don't know why you think the GF2's are not good with wireframes -- the Ultra can handle huge wireframe models in Maya. Houdini has a few issues, but so far I haven't found anything "unworkable" on a dual 850. I find Houdini far less "refined" than Maya on W2K in general, so I'm not sure how much is due to the card and how much is due to W2K. What aspects of Houdini did you find unworkable? I'd like to try these situations on my rig.
You have to consider that companies can sell "game" cards at a vastly lower profit margin since they sell such a huge number of them (vastly higher volumes than the "pro" card market.) This allows them to offer higher overall performance at a lower cost. Since they make much higher overall profits, they're able to put a lot more into R&D -- this is evidenced by companies like Nvidia coming up from behind so quickly. Also, Nvidia, as you pointed out, has excellent driver developement -- faster than any "pro" card company I've seen. Nvidia drivers have taken care of a LOT of the issues that people were complaining about only a couple months ago.
This is highly reminiscent of the "NT vs SGI" arguments a couple years ago. People kept saying over and over that while NT machines were fine for "office work" like spreadsheets and word processing, you need a "pro" machine -- an SGI -- to do 3D work. They continued to say this long after NT machines had the speed to compete with SGI's.
Were at that point now with 3D cards. "Game" cards as you call them can now compete in pro apps with other cards in their price range. They are better at some things and not as good at others, but they can certainly compete.
Larry
